US tower operator Crown Castle has increased its full-year site rental revenue forecast for 2025 as carriers continue to deploy 5G spectrum.

Crown Castle has raised its outlook to include a $10 million increase to site rental revenues this year, with the company expecting to make $4.04 billion for the year.

It represents a slight bump for Crown Castle, which also expects to increase its Adjusted EBITDA by $25m for the year, in part due to the site rental boost.

The company currently owns and operates more than 40,000 telecom towers.

“With strong operational performance and higher leasing activity from our customers as they continue to augment capacity in their networks, we delivered solid results in the second quarter and increased our full-year 2025 outlook,” stated Dan Schlanger, Crown Castle’s interim president and CEO.

For the second quarter of this year, Crown Castle said it achieved 4.7 percent organic growth in site rental billings of $45m, though this excluded the impact of a $51m loss from Sprint cancellations.

Overall, the company posted site rental revenues of $56m for the quarter, a decline of 5.3 percent year on year.

Despite this, the company appeared bullish during its earnings call, in particular around 5G deployment opportunities.

When asked about the development cycle of 5G, Schlanger told analysts that he expects the cycle to continue for some time yet.

“On the timeline of 5G, this deployment cycle versus others, the 4G cycle was 10 to 12 years that took to go from the beginning of the 4G cycle until we really started 5G in earnest. I don’t think there’s anything that would lead us to believe that the 5G cycle would be any shorter,” said Schlanger. “I think there is something that would say that the 5G cycle might be longer just because the quantum of incremental data continues to grow.”

CEO search continues

During the call, Schlanger also fielded questions around Crown Castle’s search for a permanent CEO.

Schlanger is currently the interim CEO following Steven Moskowitz’s departure in March, after less than 12 months at the helm.

He replaced former CEO Jay Brown, who announced his departure in December 2023. Brown had led the company since 2016.

“The Board is actively searching for a CEO,” he said. “I don’t think that they are waiting for the deal [small cells sale] to close. I think that they are trying to find the right person to lead this company going forward.”

Schlanger said the company hasn’t put a timeframe on the search, but is pushing to make an appointment quickly.

“I think that they want to find the CEO who is no longer interim, as quickly as they can, because it would be something that would clear up another level of uncertainty at our company. And we’ve had plenty of uncertainties.”

Pure-play tower focus, fiber sale progresses

The company also touched on the planned sale of its small cells and fiber assets during the call.

Back in March, Crown Castle struck a deal to sell its small cells and fiber assets for a combined $8.5 billion, with Zayo Group snapping up the fiber and EQT Active Core Infrastructure getting the small cells.

Providing an update, Schlanger said that Crown Castle expects to close the sale in the first half of next year.

“We have already started receiving state-level approvals, and we are actively engaged with the Department of Justice as we process a second request for information that we recently received,” said Schlanger.

The company’s decision to sell the assets is part of Crown Castle’s strategy to focus more on its tower business.

Crown Castle previously confirmed it had canceled plans to build around 7,000 small cells, noting it mutually agreed to cancel the builds due to the lengthy permit times and high costs.

“We believe our continued focus on operating the tower business more efficiently, along with our previously announced capital allocation framework, will position the company to maximize value as a pure-play US tower operator,” added Schlanger.